The State of Feast: Collaborated 4.3 Feedback from Aether, Primal & Chaos

Dear SE Dev team,

Players from the Aether/Chaos/Primal communities would like to thank you for listening to much of the feedback that we previously provided.

After experiencing the Feast PvP changes introduced in Patch 4.3, we feel that reception has been mostly positive in Season 8. Here is some additional feedback that many players across Aether/Primal/Chaos have collaborated to provide SE with regarding these changes and we appreciate attention on this matter.

Making respawns occur at the player’s base again was a good change. However, we feel that the respawn timer is too long. It is currently possible to kill the enemy healer, along with 2 more of the team’s members before the healer is able to heal once again (a total of about 13-14 seconds). We believe this is too punishing and suggest that the respawn time be shortened to be a maximum of 10 seconds. Consider starting the respawn countdown timer immediately upon death, or reducing the death and revive animation time.

The PvP community would like to see how a shortened respawn timer would play out in Feast. However, players believe that this might not be enough, and that the medal system may require more adjustments. Players would like to see light medals removed (or, if must be modified; i.e. keeping light medals in practice mode but removing them for ranked) as it is too generous towards the losing team. An example of this can be seen in most matches in which teams (in both solo and light party) will deliberately "lose" the first half of the match to guarantee victory in the second half, as they will have a great handicap in their favor to assist in closing out the game. Many high tier competitors feel that the strategies which have arisen due to Light Medals are gimmicky, unfun, and ruin the competitive direction of the game. The community understands why light medals were added, which was to promote diverse targeting and not just "tunneling" a single enemy, but we would be very grateful if SE would consider that a player simply dropping less medals upon their 2nd death and beyond is enough of a motivator for a team to select a different kill target. The community agrees that comebacks are exciting, but not when they are handed to you through game mechanics. It is far more exciting to watch a team come back and win through skill, teamwork, and snap decision making, and we hope that in the spirit of competition and the aspirations for Feast to become a more competitive E-sport, the development team will feel the same.

The HUD that shows the medals for both teams can get confusing at times, since a player’s team is sometimes displayed on the left, and sometimes on the right. Consider changing this to consistently display the player’s team on the left.

Being able to see additional abilities was an interesting change. However, we believe that these additional abilities should remain hidden to the enemy team at the start of the match and no longer changeable once the match begins. This prevents players from constantly changing their additional abilities until the very last second before entering combat.

We would like an official countdown command (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) to use on enemy players in Feast that wouldn’t be broken by other macro commands.

We would like to see more maps for variety. Reception for the new Season 8 map was mostly positive. Consider redesigning the old Feast maps to fit the style of the Season 8 Feast map with different scenery/environment.

We feel that Paladin is still currently too strong. Consider increasing the recast timer of Cover from 3 seconds to 5-7 seconds.

We would like to take this moment to highlight a SMN flaw with the pet AI, which may not be working as intended. Currently when Bahamut is summoned and the target enemy falls back behind a wall, the pet AI will glitch. This is seen by Bahamut slowing down to a crawl to follow the player before stopping, no longer attacking even after the target has been changed. Although we would like to see this bug fixed ASAP, there has been much discussion on the redesign of SMN that we hope SE will consider. We love how SE made changes to SCH in regards to how the pet functions, and we would like to see similar changes made to SMN.

Additionally we think Summoner is in need of more adjustments. We would like Bahamut to work more effectively, such as having Akh Morn and Wyrmwave execute without delay on the target. Also, consider extending the duration of Wither from 5 to 10 seconds.

In the future, we believe that the Summoner job may need a redesign of their abilities and the return of a crowd control ability.

Also, with the upcoming PvP team tournaments, we hope that SE will monitor teams closely for any potential cheating that may occur.

Making respawns occur at the player’s base again was a good change. However, we feel that the respawn timer is too long. It is currently possible to kill the enemy healer, along with 2 more of the team’s members before the healer is able to heal once again (a total of about 13-14 seconds). We believe this is too punishing and suggest that the respawn time be shortened to be a maximum of 10 seconds. Consider starting the respawn countdown timer immediately upon death, or reducing the death and revive animation time.

I stopped queueing 2 days into the season because of this (and because a recolored version of a mount I already own isn't enough motivation). I actually had a 80% win/loss, I won a lot of games because of that change, but it just didn't seem fun or fair and I know I'd probably get myself banned from losing my temper if that happened to me. This wouldn't be so bad if PvP was how it used to be where you could survive and kite with no healer, it's a double whammy, healer respawn takes too long and they nerfed kiting, they nerfed kiting because people don't wanna fight light medals, all these problems are linked.

Also light medals are bad. No-one should be punished for winning. Heavy medals have always been a good enough mechanic on their own merit for teams to come back.

Being able to see additional abilities was an interesting change. However, we believe that these additional abilities should remain hidden to the enemy team at the start of the match and no longer changeable once the match begins. This prevents players from constantly changing their additional abilities until the very last second before entering combat.

Agreed, I would like to play a few games without safeguard if I'm against a team I know I'll be safe and not get punished for it, however I can't do this because they'll know I don't have it and kill 25 medal me.

We would like an official countdown command (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) to use on enemy players in Feast that wouldn’t be broken by other macro commands.

Wouldn't need this if we can talk. Just bring back chat lol it's not like everyone who really cares about playing feast isn't already connected through Discord.
<se.5> be ready to burst
<se.1> burst in 3 seconds
Everyone attack!

We would like to see more maps for variety. Reception for the new Season 8 map was mostly positive. Consider redesigning the old Feast maps to fit the style of the Season 8 Feast map with different scenery/environment.

I still advocate for a proper map rotation.

We feel that Paladin is still currently too strong. Consider increasing the recast timer of Cover from 3 seconds to 5-7 seconds.

This was a strong point of S7 feedback, we're now at the point it's considered bad manners to pick Paladin in custom games.

We think Summoner is in need of more adjustments. We would like Bahamut to work more effectively, such as having Akh Morn and Wyrmwave execute without delay on the target. Also, consider extending the duration of Wither from 5 to 10 seconds.

I beg for the day they remove DWT, rework SMN and let us be Bahamut.[/b] The job is really good, but things like dying after aetherflow, akh morn being unreliable and dots tickling on light medals just make the job so much weaker than any other range. The foundations are there for it to be a strong pressure class, if matches worked more around outright pressure than simply count down from 5 and burst SMN would stand a real chance. This is a meta issue as a whole and isn't limited to just Summoner.

I'd love to WANT to log in again but game isn't fun right now for me in the current state and it doesn't feel like SE are listening. I'd feel better if they just answered each popular point and said "nah we ain't doing it", even if they don't give a reason at least we know they know.

- Whatever happened to adding "Burst ready!" to our shortlist of commands?
- Feast is still way too centered on being a button-mashing fest in the middle of the arena. There's no strategy.
- There's still way too much of a focus (stress) on healers to the point where the beginning of every match is "which healer can outlast and outcast the other before someone dies."
- The new barriers in the map create massive LOS problems. Sometimes when I jump as dragoon, it goes over the barrier, sometimes it does nothing. Sometimes it jerks the screen around because it doesn't know where to place the character. It's really disconcerting.

Feast is alot better now then in season 7 at least. But i agree that Paladin needs to get nerfed and summoner buffed abit because right now if i get a Summoner on the team and are up against a Paladin the chance of loosing that game is very high. also Astro might need to get tuned down to whm and Scholars level because right now you always see Astro in every game because its so strong.

I agree with all of this, except hiding seeing additional actions. I think that being able to see additional actions is very beneficial, and puts players on an even field verses those that may use 'alternative methods' of questionable legality to track it.

Light medals and the respawn change are by far the biggest offenders as to why this season isn't as fun OR balanced as previous ones. Heavy medals already work as a comeback mechanic, it allows team that are already behind to get that extra boost they need to turn the tide, there's no reason to add an extra mechanic. All this is doing is making it so that it's extremely difficult for even a very good team to close out a match and 600 the enemy team unless the skill discrepancy of both teams is enormous.

If you're playing really well, you should be able to close a game out, and heavy medals is the incentive. Why risk your team taking more damage and allowing for a comeback when you can just finish off the enemy team and end the match before that even becomes a possibility? Light medals makes sure that's not going to happen though. It feels like the enemy team is being rewarded for playing worse.

Comeback mechanics in the context of professional basketball, it's like the hoop decreases in size with every game won by the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. At this point, the Cleveland Cavaliers will win the NBA Finals coming from a 0-3 deficit - The hoop for the the Golden State Warriors, at this point, is so small that scoring points is extremely difficult, if not impossible. LOL Whereas the hoop increases in size for the Cleveland Cavaliers because they're losing the series.

In Feast... I viewed a match on Twitch - A team scored kills on both DPS and the healer. All that was left with an original stack of medals was the enemy tank. Because of light medals, they lost at the end of the match. O.o And from my observation, it happens quite often. I think the devs should take a look at gameplay data to determine the percentage of wins by underperforming teams resulting from Light Medals. If that data shows any significant win rate to underperforming teams, Light Medals should be removed from Feast. ^_^

EDIT: IMO, there shouldn't be comeback mechanics. The better team should win 100% of the time.

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